Gastric emptying study

A gastric emptying study is a nuclear medicine scan that involves your child eating a standardized meal (usually scrambled eggs and toast). The radiologist then takes pictures at regular intervals over a four-hour period to see how quickly the stomach empties. When the GI tract is working normally, the stomach should be mostly empty by the end of four hours. If more of the food remains, that’s a sign that the stomach is not emptying appropriately. Unfortunately, the standard gastric emptying study is of limited use in children due to lack of normative cutoffs values. Our research team at Children’s Wisconsin is working on developing cutoff values using a new gastric emptying breath test. This test does not involve radiation and can be applied to healthy children to create cutoff values. Our research team is hopeful that this test soon may be applied in clinical care for children with symptoms suggestive of gastroparesis.

Related conditions

• Chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease
• Gastroparesis
• Heartburn and reflux
• Motility disorders

Related services

• Chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction
• Gastroparesis
• Heartburn and reflux
• Motility disorders